Just before the first debate, Obama was 169 votes, that is 1 away from the 170 threshold to win, and he was leading in all of the tossup states. Even if it wasn't over the 5% mark needed to consider the states as leaning his way. The fact that he was consistently leading in these tossup states, means, that it wasn't a fluke, and he only needed to win over any one of them while retaining his safe states, to win in November. Now he has 217 votes according to the latest polling, and lost Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, which were all leaning his way before the debate, and are all tossups now.

He still has a decent lead in some of them, like the traditionally liberal and democratic states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire, but in most of them where he is leading, it is by less than 1%. In some states where he HAD the lead, it has now swung Romney's way, although it by less than 1% in most cases, but his loss of Ohio as a leaning Obama state, is a very bad thing, since it is worth 18 electoral points, and his tie in Florida isn't good either.

My conclusion is that Obama absolutely cannot afford to lose another debate. He really needs to step up his game here, in a major way, or he will have completely dropped the ball on the huge lead he had going into the first debate.

I will say that even if you give Obama his leaning states + the states he has a lead in, even if it is not above the tossup threshold, he will win the election. Also, if you take away the states that he has less than a 4% lead in, he will still win the election, but not my much. He is still doing better than Romney overall, and on track to win, as things currently stand, but the fact that he lost so much ground after just one debate, is bad for him. If the trend continues like that in subsequent debates, then he will end up losing. He has time to step up, but not much time.

A lot of the polling data on that 538 site seems to be out of date, but I'll keep checking it out. In some more bad news for Obama, the latest polling data shows that Michigan is no longer a strong Obama state. A couple of weeks ago, he was somewhere around 10 points up in that state, and now he is 2.7, which is within the margin of error, meaning Michigan is now considered a 'tossup'. Michigan is traditionally a very strong blue state, owing to the size and power of its labor unions, so this is terrible news for Obama.

I am an independent. I am not saying these things, in order to make Romney look better, I am just being realistic. No-one can look at the free-fall Obama has been in since the debate, and see it as anything but really bad. Obama is ahead, but it is a very slight lead, and people can't sit back and be comfortable with it. I'm just trying to point out what is going on, so people realize that Obama CAN lose this election, if he does not kick a higher gear soon.

I want Obama to win, and still think he will. Difference between now and, say, last week is, last week I would have discounted any possibility of a Romney win. Whereas now I see it as possible. Still not likely, but possible.

I remember a few years back now there was this flash thing some american news website had made that let you fiddle about with voter turnout and popularity ratings and the like so you could get a rough estimate on what was required for a republican or a democrat to win.

Depending on which side of the fence you sit the good/bad news is that unless there's been a colossal change in voting habits since then the only way Romney can get in is if the voter turnout is low, say 25-30% anything more and the democrats win.

"If we hit that bullseye the rest of the dominoes will fall like a a house of cards, checkmate." Zapp Brannigan

Honestly I can't remember, I didn't care as much then as I do now. But it seemed to me that those two were a little more polarised than Obama/Romney who both seem to be trying to grab the undecided/central voters - in which case I can see the debates having a bigger impact.

But then, that's spoken from a reasonable level of ignorance so feel free to correct.

Yeah, pretty much. Except for one where it was later found that Bush was likely to have had a transmitter/earpiece guiding him around pitfalls. Nobody seemed to care, strangely enough. That Romney is gaining anything from these debates may be down to his stopping shooting himself in the foot at every single opportunity rather than beating Obama. I reckon people are just looking for someone to blame for anything that is wrong in their lives, and as there are a few problems, the president should take a hit, unless he is running against a moron who never stops reminding you of the kind of person that helped get the country into its current mess.

Anyone watching the VP Debate? Biden is being a bit smirky/assholish but IMO definitely doing better than Ryan. He definitely has the balls Obama lacked in his first debate, and is calling out more of his opponent's lies on the spot.

Haha! She really didn't have a fucking clue what she was talking about. I wish the presenter had pushed a little bit more, but it was already obvious that she wasn't able to actually answer anything properly.